Cohesion - a strange motto

I’ll be teaching an honours module again next Spring on Citizenship, from a practical theological perspective and have been working on some updates of my lecture material today. In trying to gather my thoughts about ‘the future of citizenship’ - the last lecture in the series - I was digging about in some of the New Labour initiatives and reports.

The Commission on Integration and Cohesion has recently published its final report, ‘Our Shared Future’ and its no surprise that it’s strong on finding ways of both expressing and developing community cohesion in the midst of increasing diversity. I don’t have any major problem with citizenship being instrumental as long as it doesn’t become too tightly focused around government policies. I don’t like the idea that citizenship might become only something that the government uses, and as a more socially (and perhaps politically) acceptable language for talking about substantial cultural differences.

The report opens with the Chair’s letter which begins with what appears to be the Commission’s motto: “A past built on difference, a future which is shared.”  Perhaps I’m missing something really obvious but I can’t quite get my head around this motto.  What follows seems to be an explanation: “As a commission our vision of society is one where people are committed to what we have in common rather than obsessing with those things that make us different.”

We didn’t build our past -  we built our future, then, which is now the present we’re living in.  The present we’re living in is also the product of our hopes for the future.  Whilst the sentiments of the vision are admirable I’m not sure that the full significance of the very different futures held by various faith groups is recognised. Some Christians expect a great dividing in the future, when the Day of Judgement comes. Other Christians anticipate a great ingathering and righting of injustices within the all-encompassing love of God - from no-one is excluded. The eschatological outlooks within other faiths can be similarly diverse.

I look forward to exploring this report in depth and maybe the finite horizon that features in its opening isn’t the only story it tells.  But if we only consider ways of sharing our temporal visions of the future we’ll be neglecting the even more powerful influence of religious eschatologies and how they have an effect, from the future, on the present.